Lightroom 4 Review

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 offers an impressive list of features, the vast majority of which will be familiar to those who explored the previously-released public beta Adobe made available in January.

These include a completely new book-creation module, expanded support for video, soft proofing capability, and geo-tagging of still and video images via a Google Maps-powered module. Image editing tools have also been significantly updated, with a new process version (PV2012) that includes a reworking of the Basic panel controls and new localized editing options. If you've spent time playing with the public beta and are already comfortable using these features, you can jump ahead to a listing of the few (and mostly minor) changes that have gone into the shipping version of Lightroom 4.

One welcome surprise to everyone, though, is Adobe's announcement of a 50% price drop. For the first time in Lightroom's five year history, the retail price is now $149 US for a full version. Upgrade pricing for current users as well as the student/teacher versions also see a (more modest) price reduction to $79 US.

I've been using the shipping version of Lightroom 4 for a few weeks with my own personal image catalog and in this review I'll take you through the tools and features that have changed since Lightroom 3. Keep in mind this is not a step-by-step Lightroom tutorial, rather an illustrated guide to what has been added and updated. My goal is to explain the new features so that you can decide whether the upgrade to Lightroom 4 is one you should make. Of course, if you've already decided to take the plunge, this article will help you get started in exploring these new features for yourself.

System requirements

Before we get started it's important to note that the minimum system requirements for Lightroom have changed. Lightroom 4 does not support 32-bit Macs. You must be running a 64-bit Intel processor and OS 10.6.8 or higher (read this Apple support document to determine whether your Mac has a 64-bit processor). On the Windows side, support for Windows XP has been dropped. Lightroom now requires a version of Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Develop module

Lightroom 4 introduces Process Version (PV) 2012. What's a process version and why should you care? Well, it's the image processing engine behind Lightroom (and Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw plug-in). The Lightroom engineers make periodic tweaks to its components to provide better image rendering and/or enable new editing functionality. While the rendering performance sees some minor changes, PV2012 stands out by introducing a redesigned and recalibrated set of the Develop module's Basic panel tools, along with more localized editing options. Simply put, PV2012 is of huge consequence for every serious Lightroom user. Its changes are significant and will have a direct effect on your editing workflow.

As with the introduction of previous process versions, Lightroom, by default honors the current (in this case PV2010) process version of your existing images. If you desire, you can simply go on working as you always have. But should you choose to update an image to PV2012, a whole host of new functionality awaits.

Basic panel

Select any image in the Develop module that was imported in Lightroom 3 or earlier and you'll notice a warning icon in the lower right (shown below), indicating the image has not been updated to PV2012.

A warning icon appears at the bottom of the Develop module when an image processed via PV2010 or earlier (circled in red) is displayed.

After clicking the icon you can choose to update the selected image or all images in the filmstrip. Once an image is updated to PV2012 you will notice a revised collection of tools in the Basic Panel (shown below), as well as a noticeable change to the appearance of your image.

Gone from the Basic panel are the Recovery, Fill Light and Brightness sliders. Instead, what you see in Lightroom 4 is a separate grouping of sliders labeled Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. Moving any of these sliders to the right (a positive value) brightens pixels. Negative adjustments darken pixels. The default value for all items in the Basic Panel is now set to 0 for raw files, just as they have always been for JPEG images.

Many of the Basic panel controls in Lightroom 3 (shown above)...

...have been changed in version 4 with default values set to 0.

It's very important to understand that for many of the Basic panel tools, the internal effects ranges have been changed, meaning that a slider value of say +50 in a PV 2010 tool may not correspond to +50 in the equivalent PV2012 tool. When updating PV2010 (or earlier) images which already contain manual Basic panel adjustments, slider values will be carried over or 'transposed' to the appropriate PV2012 settings. But the appearence of your image will change, often significantly. For this reason, I encourage you to apply PV2012 on an image by image basis to your existing photos to get a feel for what the new tools can do. Or simply import new images, which will automatically get the newest process version, and explore the new features with those images.

White balance

The WB selector's sample area is now zoom-dependant, mimicing the behavior seen in Adobe Camera Raw. Clicking with the WB tool on an image displayed in say a 1:2 (50%) view will result in a white balance calculation based on a wider range of pixels than performing the same action with the image at a 1:1 view. Put more simply, when you adjust the Scale slider for the WB selector's loupe window, the image area you see in the grid is now the same area that LR will sample to determine WB.

The loupe window of the WB selectorindicates the sampling area on which the WB calculation will be made.

Setting the Scale slider to the lowest possible magnification results in a widerarea of pixels from which to sample.

Sampling over a wider area of pixels should lead to more accurate WB settings in noisy images by minimizing the impact of random pixel values. In previous versions of Lightroom, a consistent grid of pixels was being sampled regardless of the image view or Scale slider setting.

Comments

I use Bibble pro and like it a lot. I started looking for an alternative since Bibble will not open large scans of medium format film due to file size limitations. They compare favorably, but I think Bibble is faster and the controls are laid out a little better -- overall the UI in Bibble is better. I think it is easier to make simple corrections in LR and easier to make more complex corrections in Bibble. I like the integration of Noise Ninja in Bibble. Bibble also support a simple layer-like edit capability but I have always found that a little cumbersome to use. I like the "history" of edits in LR but would like the ability to enable or disable them to see kind of a "before/after" of an edit more easily. I like Bibble better but it doesn't meet all of my needs. Still looking for other options to handle large files.

I was very excited to read that LR 4 had a book design module, but after reading the review I realize that the book module is worthless for me. As a wedding photographer, I design professional albums all the time, and being able to design an album within LR would be a huge plus. Unfortunately, it looks like this module does not allow me to design the kind of albums I need.

It looks like it is set up to design Blurb Books, which would be fine if it allowed you to do certain customizations to design other albums/books. This is my wish list:1. Custom sizes so you can design any type of album.2. Ability to do custom page layouts that can be saved as templates.3. Ability to put stroke on images4. Ability to draw guides to designate trim lines, gutter, and safe area.5. Ability to output to jpg, and psd. None of the album companies I've worked with accept pdf's. They only take jpgs.6. Ability to organize your custom layout templates.

Are you kidding me? XP is going on 11 years old. It is two (soon to be three) generations obsolete. Technology has moved on. That's just how it works. If every piece of software had to work on 11 year old OS's it will retard software development for decades.

Comparing dropping support for a near 11 year old OS that isn't even produced anymore to mugging is just ridiculous. It isn't adobes fault you insist on using an outdated OS's.

I already need to upgrade my old XP workstation for the 32-bit memory limit. I constantly run out memory when running LR3 + PS-CS4 + a few 3rd party filters. LR4 is just making the upgrade that much more compelling. And, as was already mentioned, my LR3 still works just fine until I can afford a new computer.

Your are all entitled to your opinions. I've been with Adobe for a long time and started to get peeved with them a while back so although I'm still using Adobe design Standard and Web Standard as well as Lightroom 3.6 I will take them no further.No TFergus my copy of LR3 works perfectly fine and never crashes even though it has catalogued 250k images. Josh 152 your defence of Adobe is wasted as many other companies latest software works perfectly with XP ie Sony Vegas 11 and Proshow Producer 5 ,which costs a bit more than lightroom but is written by a company that cuts there user base abit more slack than Adobe appears to do. The rest of the comments made are not really worth a reply.

Sorry Tom, but you're diggin' a hole here. XP, as good as it was (mostly...) is now verging on ancient, in OS terms. By all means keep an old system with XP churning away on it if you must, but even Windows 7 is in its 4th(?) year now, so it's not like people are sheepishly following MS's every desire. In fact, I've only just today reinstalled my trusty XP gaming rig with 7 Pro 64bit in preparation for LR4, having already done so with my 'net PC (this one) about a year ago. I like XP, and I like 7, but I decided it was time to finally move on from XP before I find myself unable to use the software I want to.

It is not "indoctrination" it is simply the pace technology and software improves. Ancient is a relative term. For example the pyramids were constructed around 3200 B.C. and are considered ancient but so is a man who is 100 years old. In technology terms 11 years IS ancient.

Think about it. When xp was released in 2001 digital cameras were still in their infancy. The iPhone was still 6 YEARS away. DDR 2 ram was still 2 years away and the fasts speed when released was only 266MHz. Facebook was still 3 YEARS away. In 2001 most computers were still running Pentium 3's. I could go on but you get the point.

It costs adobe money to keep supporting multiple , obsolete OS's. With windows 8 on the way it makes no sense to wast money supporting a no longer manufactured O.S.

Adobe is just the first. I am sure we will start seeing more and more software dropping xp support.

If you don't get the argument that I have a perfectly good PC that I do not want to throw into landfill just because the Software/ Hardware cartel needs to make more money out of me to keep the cash cow rolling then I guess you will never get it.

Those like Tom who are sticking by XP are only harming themselves. XP was a great OS for its time, but it's vastly outdated and insecure for today's internet. The computing world changes very fast and OS updates aren't only to make the rich richer, it's also to redesign for usability and most importantly, security.

If you'd like to continue to look at it as only money, then feel free. You say you have a perfectly good PC but you honestly don't. Programs are capable of much more and need the security and features of a new OS as well as the hardware to run on. It's like you have a canoe but want to host a party for 20 on the lake. If you want to party, you need to buy a bigger boat.

I use W7 and XP, you mention security, but that is for 80% up to the user. I you update all your software regurarly, etc, then XP is still very capable. In fact, W7 gives me more headaches as XP concerning stability and searching for docs and settings, etc.

I also would not write off anything for dropping XP support. XP has problems, and it always has. Further, MS will be dropping support for XP anytime now that 8 is out. It's very expensive for them to support an OS, esp. one that was flawed from day one and is losing what users didn't upgrade to 7 now to 8..or MAC.

does anyone here work with aperture. I got into it as I am using mac computers and when the price dropped to something like 69euros in the app store. as far as I can say (as far as I could see :-) the noise reduction in light room seems to be better. in the new version of LR highlight and shadow handling seems to be improved. my main camera is a G3 and for more ambitious tasks I rent whatever it takes (the MKii it used to be, will check out the nikon800e soon). so is it worth getting the LR too or even switching ? the G3 RAW files have their limits (I like this little camera with the lovely pancakes) so GOOD processing seems to be even more of an issue... (I print the stuff on a epson 4900, very very good machine !)

Lightroom v4 has been offered at US $79 for an upgrade $149 full product.At today's exchange rate that would be just under A$75 (upgrade) or A$141 (Full). The UK store would be even better for us on today's rates at A$73 (upgrade) or A$129 (Full).

I have been a loyal Lightroom user since Version 1 and have also paid for upgrades for both v2 & v3. I wouldn't expect that Adobe would offer it at today's exchange rate but you are not even close. I will be in no hurry to upgrade with the unfair pricing policy that Adobe Australia seem to have in place.

I agree. It's always been this way in Australia. The publishers ad distributors used to give excuses like, the cost of providing local support lines (they no longer have them afaik, and if they do you pay for the support), localisation (which was always a lie, choose UK english dictionary and you still get US spelling) and anyway everything is internationalised by default now anyway. The internationalisation for Europe is much harder than Au and they get the cheaper price (and I assume most of the language for Portugal or Spain would be good for most of Srth America). It's not like they need to ores different DVDs for each region (though they may choose too) - still the price of DVDs explains zip when most ppl want to download. Ironically its cheaper for an Aussie to buy a DVD from a US retailer than to download from the Adobe site. I can see no reason for it.And I agree it encourages piracy.Ironically Sweden, the home of The Pirate Bay, probably gets the cheaper EU prices.Meh.

In Croatia they didn't list the price for 4 yet, but they have Lightroom 3 for 440 USD ;( so I'd say you guys are getting it cheap :D link: http://store.hsm.hr/kategorije.5ac9d416373d4178ba3cd5f224b7f792.adobe-photoshop-porodica.aspx

Has Adobe ever addressed or given a reason for the large price differences? Curious why they might be pricing it that way. I imagine there has to be some kind of "internal pricing structure" they adhere to. I can't imagine it's complete greed, or they would have not dropped the price at all, but I am not an accountant or economics expert. Sometimes, with a lower price a larger audience can be reached, but if they are aiming for the general masses it's too pricey. And that goes contrary to selling it at a higher price overseas. I assume there has to be some reason, legitimate or not in our and their minds that would make them follow such a pricing model. I am also sure it was very calculated and researched to death, then settled on what they have now knowing the price discrepancies. I would really like to know if the have talked about it publicly. It does deserve addressing, because their customers have asked and are rightly frustrated.

I Like it! Worth the Upgrade.Have been a LR user from the very first beta. and use LR every day.

The conversion of LRv3.6 to LRv4 is just ok ... you will want to tweak your settings in LRv4, and will get better results via more control imho. There might be a bit more detail. But, that might be from the improved Clarity slider.

With every version, I make fewer trips to PS.

But, Adobe ... Can we please have a LITTLE more SPEED in the v4.01 for Win7 64-bit update ? Please

Maybe a way for LR to use more Memory (preferance slider) or load all the program in memory.

I am a longtime Aperture user who never really took to LR3. I used it for noise reduction and applying adjustments with the gradient tool. But LR 4.1 is a big improvement, IMO. The develop tools are much better than in the previous version. However, the interface is still extremely user-surly, requiring endless module changes and memorization of key commands. The database functions are nowhere near as easy or elegant as Aperture's. So I use both programs. At least now I find LR to be a much better competitor to Aperture. May they continue to compete for a long, long time!

Hi all, I love the improvements Ive tried on the beta version. Ive got LR3 already bought in the box in my country (New Zealand). Everyone is advertising the upgrade of US$79 which is a good deal, and I have been trying repeatedly to purchase it online, like I can do on EBay, Amazon, WotIf or any business that values its international customer base. I even pay for the download traffic volume on my ISP here for the privilede of the download (no postage cost to Adobe). So why wont Adobe let me purchase it on their store. Instead I think they want me to pay an approx 30% premium and pay in Australian dollars (worth more)and then pay additional to convert that to my Kiwi dollars (worth less). Fellow photographers, the others of us in this planet of 9 Billion people who will get less product support anyway, would value your supportive comments to make it a level field. Phase One let me buy online their products at international pricing. Adobe: time to step up to the mark? Cheers, Brando10

I have a small bug in Lightroom 4. When I mouse over the histogram in the Develop Module, the pop up tips are E-mail labels, such as "Mark as read", "Mark as spam" "delete", "reply"..etc..Anyone else have this happening to them?Just curios if its just my system. Its a peculiar bug.

I was using a mac, no other apps running, same thing happens, and I restarted the computer. Same result. Its not a big deal. I love it so far and havent had any serious issues. I found the tool tips funny because I thought I had something running underneath and kept trying to check my mail program to see what was happening. No big deal for me and good so far with LR 4.

I have noted that LR acts oddly in some cases when running in multi-monitor full screen mode. They have "topmost" window bug in there somewhere. If you are using dual monitors, see if cvhanges when only using one (F11).

That IS bizarre, then! It's hard to imagine how those strings even appear in LR (or any Adobe program, come to that). I'd be interested to know if those tool tips are the same as the ones in whatever mail program you use...

I dont use the mail app on my mac much, just webmail. The mac mail app is installed of course, but I have not used it in months. I will try an compare the tool tips to see if its from that. I video captured it just in case I needed to show support or something, I may upload it to youtube so others can see it.

Daing it I cant type I will try and re set up my mail program to see if anything happens.

I have toyed with Elements, Lr and Ps, but in terms of workflow I don't really have a clear idea of the pros and cons of each tool, and have even less idea about the workflow differences between using (say) Lr's QD, Library and Develop.

Does anyone know of a good introductory guide that explains how these tools and functions can/should be used? Not in the sense of a Reference Guide (which assumes you already know mostly what you're doing), but in the context of use cases, e.g. if you want to quickly edit exposure on 100 photos, you'd use this tool/workflow, but if you want to do detail work such as healing you'd use this one, and here's a few options on how to manage your assets in each tool, etc?

Hmm, and also some sort of discussion around the pros/cons when there is more than one way to do things, e.g. make a background whiter, where you could use layers in Ps, or use the brush tool and Highlights in Lr?

I found Scott Kelby's "Lightroom 3 for Digital Photographers" to be an excellent intro to workflow in Lightroom's various modules. He gives a very practical, step by step guide to workflow for photographers. He doesn't cover every way to do things, but does cover what he thinks are the most effective work flows, with clear advice on what to do, and what to avoid. You don't need to read cover to cover. Excellent for beginners and beyond. I imagine he will produce a LR4 version.

Has anyone actually migrated from LR3 yet? Just wondering if there are any snags. I have over 100,000 raw images in my main catalog, dozens of collections and other smaller project catalogs that will need to move over.

Yes, I did read the article and I didn't feel this was covered well enough if at all.

Lack of image resize seems to be a basic missing feature. Although I understand the export resize meme, I get some files such as way too big scans or a set of large photos that really don't need to be maintained at full resolution as examples. Simply too much disk space. Round tripping to PS seems crazy just to resize a photo.

If you're only resizing one or two images, then yes, Lightroom isn't good at an in-place resize. But if you were doing a bulk resize, it should be much faster to do a bulk export/resize out of Lightroom than to make a Photoshop action that laboriously opens and processes each individual file one by one, then swap out the new smaller set for the old.

Lossy DNG isn't any better or worse, because to get it you would still have to export your oversized original to it like any other format.

It's worth noting that Adobe has modified their end-user license agreement to allow commercial use for their student/teacher pricing. That means that if you have a .edu email address, you can buy a copy at $79 and use it for your photography business. This is a big deal since there are a LOT of people with .edu email addresses or other means to show affiliation with a school.

This came up when Adobe "accidentally" offered an 80% coupon on all student/teacher suites, which was already discounted at 80%. While this only happened for a few hours, Adobe decided to honor all orders that got through. Picked up a copy of 5.5 Design Suite Premium for $89.

Too much fluff, I really just want something to develop the raws in the least amount of time and with the least amount of 'tweaking' required. Book mode, map mode, print-to-whatever mode, all those things are totally lost on people like me and probably 95% of the users out there. This is why a lot of people still use Digital Photo Professional over adobe camera raw for 99% of the photos out there. Make the raw development engine quick and intelligent with as much automatic setting as possible and only then will people like me be willing to pay that much for it.

I don't know anyone who uses DPP except for formats that Apple or Adobe don't yet support. Who cares about the "fluff"? Just ignore it and move on. If you really just want RAW dev, use ACR through photoshop or as a standalone. Much better than the mess that is DPP. Lightroom is primarily for organization.

The point is they spent all the product development time on adding fluff rather than fixing the problems in the core function -- raw development. ACR is great for when you want really fine control, but it is lacking compared to other tools in terms of automatic setting, time use / efficiency, and interface.

No automatic settings would make me happy since all photos are different. But that's why you can easily create presets and apply them to batches of photos. Much better than Auto stuff which is only good for the common dominator.

My advice, create presets, use them and you will be faster than auto stuff.

I am mystified as to how anyone could call an rewritten development engine, redesigned develop UI, and soft-proofing to be "fluff." That is the core of the program, and it's what I would be most interested in upgrading for. Because that is substance. It's still worth the reduced upgrade price even without the books and maps.

Considering I bought LR3 last week and still haven´t received the package yetI´m very, very, VERY dissatisfied as I payed $70 more for an older version. And Adobe is not the the easiest company to send an e-mail to...Very bad Adobe, very bad.

Me too, I bought LR3 just one week ago, and was a little peed off to see that LR4 became available yesterday for less than I paid last week. I contacted them last night, but am still awaiting a definitive reply on providing me with an upgrade.

People seems to have fetish in buying things when in fact they haven't explored all the possibilities of the softwares that they currently have. Well, if money don't matter to these individuals, they can spend as much as they want. Just being practical.

Yes Lightroom does have a history panel. It allows you to step back all the way to the original image if you want. Lightroom is non-destructive as well. Lightroom is much quicker at processing RAW images compared to Adobe Camera RAW especially when processing a large number of images. I was skeptical until I bought it as a package with CS5, now I do most of my editing with it. I never thought I'd say that.

I didn't see Lightroom working any faster than ACR, perhaps those impressions are based on application settings. Photoshop CS6 will surely have the same processing engine in its updated ACR. The real reason to go with Lightroom is if you want a one-stop image management and processing tool. If you deal exclusively (or at least primarily) with photo files, Lightroom is an excellent choice. If you work with other types of image files and regularly use Photoshop for editing, content creation, and design work, it's hard to make a case for two different workflows and applications. I guess if you want the social and web capabilities of Lightroom for a subset of your image work, then I could see a reason to use both tools.

In spite of its name, Photoshop has its roots in graphic arts, whereas Lightroom was designed from the ground-up for photographers. If what you want from photo software is the same kind of enhancements photographers have employed in wet-process darkrooms for over a hundred years (e.g. control over exposure, contrast, color, crop etc.) then Lightroom is a great tool, and I wouldn't be without it. If you need to make rainy days look sunny, or fix Aunt Mabel's enormous ears, Photoshop's more appropriate. Ps and Lr are different. I only use Lr but know photographers who need both.

Sure, there isn't t that much difference if you compare single image development, but like Missimo said, if you are comparing the time spent editing whole shoots, if your work is about editing multiple similar images at once, getting stuff out the door faster to get paid sooner and more often, Camera Raw gets left in the dust.

They are completely different applications. I process about 1000 photographs per week using LR . This throughput would be totally impossible using Photoshop. I would describe LR as being a production tool for photographers and PS as a tool for graphic artists.

I am photographer but I have also strong skills in graphic arts and I have to say I think PS way of editing (black/white point, gamma/curve) feels more precise and LR "photographers way" (exposure etc) feels more vague. That said, indeed when processing hundreds of photos I choose LR any day.

Does anyone know of a page anywhere that compares the features of Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop CS5 Extended? I've been looking for such a page on the Adobe site and it might be there, but I'll be darned if I can find it.

Aside from Photoshop vs Photoshop Extended, they all have a completely different workflow. You can't compare the 'features' of these so black 'n white, just like a Mirrorless camera and a SLR can't be compared with just the specs sheet. It might be an interesting DPReview Article tho. If you could get them to do that. ;)

I have been using PS Elements for years but my ignorance of post processing is incredible. I tried an older version of LR and found it less capable than Elements. Is this LR4 as capable in image processing as Elements? Does it use Elements organizer or something similar? Also, I often have major problems with my color output vice the screen version as mentioned in the article. Will LR4 help? Finally, when my program asks me what should control color output should I choose Adobe, my program, or Epson (my printer)?

Lightroom is first of all a photo organizer. Bu t it's also a strong photographer-oriented photo editor. It allows you to easily apply selective edits to parts of your photo using the brush or grade tool. Doing the same thing would require using layers in Elements, and would take much longer. It might help with your color problems too, but I'd read up on color management in general.

Elements will probably do more via layers and type tools etc - LR is simply an organiser and catalogue with ability to do adjusments to photographs but not so much manipulate as PS or Elements

Example you cannot merge 2 photo or swap somebody's head on to another body etc but can do 99% or the typical adjustments a photo would need

If you have problems with colour oputpuit then LR will give no advantage over Elements

Get your screen right and calibrated. If you dont want to spend to calibrate then carefully follow all the instructions for maximising contract and colour - the basic system followed very carefully is better than nowtIf you dont understand colour spaces and you dont have a calibated monitor then forget them - put everything on Prophoto (camera and manipulation device) - or just keep everything ion RGB and forget it

If you monitor is not a specialised one then you are only seeing RGB anyway Let your printer decide the settings is the easiest

While it's nice that LR 4 is cheaper than previous versions, for some of us there is a greater cost. I'm still on XP, not having seen any need to go to Vista or 7. And if I go to 7, it needs a "clean install" meaning that I loose all my applications and will have to reinstall them (having backed up all my documents, images etc). I don't really fancy doing this. It might be time to go to Lion on a Mac; but whatever option I choose, it's all annoyance and work.

So long as you have backed up all your documents and possibly any fancy preferences in your software, browsers can backup your bookmarks natively these days, it's not that big a deal really. More importantly, who knows what kinda infestations you're getting rid off, leaving today's most unsafe OS in the first place.

I've all the docs etc backed up. I've a fair few programs downloaded; I guess I have to note all the serial numbers so I don't have to pay twice when/if I reinstall them. (Computer is used for much more than just photography.) And then I'll find that some of them don't work on Win 7...

Write down serials ? Aren't they in your e-mail? And if not, why didn't you write them down already? Or have them in a backup folder. Plus you can always ask the people who you bought it from to resend you the number. Come on man, no more excuses.

Was there a huge performance upgrade from the beta? My beta would have long pauses between slider changes which was really annoying. There were many complaints about this from other people and the response was "it's a beta and this will be corrected". So my queation is, was it?

Also, can L4 read older catalogs? In the beta, LR4 would not read the older catalogs at all. I would expect it to translate the older catalogs into the new format.

Thanks for the very good review on LR4However it is a pitty that LR4 leaves the proven WinXP plattform and even WinXP 64bit version.As I heve read in this review, only few has changed in the real photographic "lightroom" process and many "features" added in the "photo album" section. I love LR because -up to now- it has been a real "tool" for photographers.

I don't think it's unreasonable for Adobe to move on from supporting an 11 year old operating system.

The Lightroom image processing engine itself is substantially improved according to reviews I trust by several professional photographers. So there's a strong "real photographic" reason to upgrade to LR4, bells and whistles aside.

Even Microsoft are abandoning XP, it's only a matter of time before all software producers are obliged to do the same. By the way, like many (millions) I held on to XP and dodged the Vista train-crash, but eventually went to Win7. It's a smart, mature O/S and I urge you to make the jump. (p.s. I'm not a MS troll, I also use Apple and Linux O/S's)

You may say that "only a few" things changed, but not only did they add two entirely new modules, but they rewrote the processing engine! That is the core of the program. So even if you count that as "one" thing, it is a huge, central thing that could certainly result in higher system requirements to achieve the quality.

I'm really disappointed in this new release. The improvements to the RAW decoding engine and develop panel are appreciated but there are very little much requested features for this to be a major version release requiring a new purchase/upgrade cycle and investment in new Photoshop CS6 in order to get the compatible version of Adobe Camera RAW.

Where is support for adjustment layers and selection of adjustment masks using anything but a paint brush?

Where is support for real clone/heal tools like in Photoshop.

Where is support for people tagging? Tagging of faces, etc..

Where is support for 10bit+ displays?

Where is support for in-pipeline plugins? I don't want to have to render my images and make a second copy just to apply a plugin. I want my plugins to participate in non-destructive editing.

I'm sure there a lot more feature requests on the Adobe feedback site but so far it seems that Adobe expects people to upgrade to 4.0 just for the highlight/shadow adj improvements.

I agree with some of this, although I've been very pleased with this update. I spend at least 3 hours a day in LR and this release fixes many of my little frustrations with it. I would like to see the clone/heal for PS as well, but I certainly don't need or want layers. The non-layered approach to photo work is what makes Lightroom what it is, and I don't like complaints that Lightroom should be made more like Photoshop. I have Photoshop and layers, while powerfu,l are slow and if I need to do that kind of work, I use PS. I also don't need tagging. I WOULD like support for 10bit+ displays, and I completely agree with the plugins! I use several plugins daily and I hate having to work with copies, it's very cumbersome.

One question, do you still have to click EXACTLY on a slider to activate it?

I can't tell you how many times (approximately a billion) that I move my mouse up to a slider only to miss it by two frickin' pixels and start moving my mouse around for edits only to discover the picture isn't changing because the slider hasn't activated. I'm staring at the picture of course, not the slider. Aaaaaghhh....

From a GUI perspective, they can make the activation area of the slider much larger than the actual slider graphical representation.

In LR, the most efficient (and precise) way to adjust slider values has always been:1. Move the cursor anywhere along the slider bar's range (you'll see a light rectangle around the value box).2. Use the up/down arrow keys to adjust the value. Hint: Shift+arrow to move in large increments. Opt+arrow to move in tiny increments.

Does anybody actually use the Quick Develop module in Library view???? And why on earth are these still not sliders????

I can't believe this wasn't removed or revamped. I think I must be missing something here. I get that these are intended to be relative changes to a group of pictures instead of absolute, but I find them almost never useful and they have a prominent place in the GUI.

Better sensitivity in exposure slider is a big plus, this drove me crazy.

I've put through 10,000+ scanned slides in Lightroom 3 and have found it to be an enormously useful tool. 50 years of my family photographs.

Face recognition would have been useful but I see that most people don't require this, I was able to hack through Picasa face recognition into Lightroom to get about 80% of it done, but even these algorithms are still not really ready for prime time, you still have to go back and check almost every photo.

i never really use quick develop. in the library module if i do anything, other than syncing edits, i'll use the match total exposure feature, which is fantastic. i just hide the quick develop module to get it out of the way.

I would use Quick Develop a lot more if you could crop from there... I quite often only have to crop and tweak exposure a little - especially in my 'news' JPG workflow. Without crop capability, I tend to skip straight to the much slower Develop module...

I never use Quick Develop. In fact I would prefer that the library/develop dichotomy be completely removed. It is unnecessary.

Many times I'm editing images (even if just to adjust white balance or crop) and I need to view or edit the metadata such as camera model or caption and I can't without abandoning the Develop task and switching to Library mode.

Also, with monitors today being quite "short" and "wide" with TV aspect ratio I would have hoped that Lightroom would support placing the filmstrip vertically to preserve vertical real estate when editing portrait aligned images. But no go. Both Capture One and Aftershot Pro let you do this.

This is my main consern about the release. The beta was really slow on my laptop and couldn't read catalogs from older versions. I was hopeing they would make sure to fix these things but with such a quick beta cycle, I don't see how they had time.

Actually, since lightroom was created for photography editing from the start, I find it extremely faster and precise for my editing needs, with an interface that is much more intuitive, whereas photoshop IMHO belongs to an older generation of photo editing applications where workflow and management of large number of photos is inexistent or badly implemented.

As an Apple Aperture user, I'm glad to see many of these new features, such as book design, maps and geotagging, video support, and soft proofing have been present in Aperture 3 since 2010 when it was released. It's refreshing to see that Adobe finally caught up. :-)

I seem to switch between the two, I would really like to settle down with Lightroom,

but there is one huge problem I have. You can't get ride of lines easy with the heal tool, if there is a hair on the lens, the only way i know how to get ride of is is a bunch of the healing circles in Lightroom, but in Aperture I can click and drag the heal brush over the whole hair. Is it just I and am not smart enough or is the software not able to do it??

A clear, well-written overview of the major additions to what looks like a good product. Mac users might like to know, though, that almost all of these new features, with the exception of lens profiles, have been available in Aperture 3 for over two years at half the price ($80). The main differences between these two programs now lie in the details and the user interface. Comparing them feature-for-feature, I now find it a wash for my purposes. Love LR's lens corrections, but also love AP's ability to save to two places simultaneously when shooting tethered. The decider for me is the UI. Aperture seems more intuitive, more streamlined, and better designed for high-volume editing (view-rank-select-organize). I'd characterize the difference between LR and AP as between an emphasis on tools vs. on workflow. AP gets me from A to Z with less clicks.

I think there are in fact two major advantages of LR over AP. One is the lend profile, as you said, but the other is the noise reduction! I've stopped using RAW in AP for astrophotography. Never managed to get a decent image compared to the in-camera JPG. With LR, it's a pleasure.If AP4 doesn't come fast and with these 2 features, I'll switch to LR4. LR3 was just too expensive compared to AP3, but now LR4 looks very interesting... If AP4 gets out with these 2 features, I guess the UI (and price) will make me stick with AP.

I'm an Aperture user for about 5 years now. I always preferred it, but LR has graduated filters and lens profiles. In Aperture, you need a plugin to do that. I bought all the NIK-plugins, but still: that creates HUGE files to work with. I will test LR4 and might make the switch...

@Xbrc completely agree about the NR. Sharpening too. aperture relies too much on third party plugins which break the nondestructive workflow. Its built in NR and sharpening are a joke. Still, I prefer Aperture over LR for organizing, and Photoshop does a better job of sharpening than either one. For noise reduction I've found the best solution is to just shoot at ISO50 ;)

I have both running on my Mac and spent the two years with Aperture until switching to LR3 last summer. It came down to one issue with AP... too many spinning beach balls, too much waiting and too many crashes. Switching to LR3 I gave up better granular editing features but at least it was stable and faster.

Develop module - I have a really BIG concern ... can all my develop presets (more than 300 now!) be converted correctly so that the changes that one of them applied to one pic in the 2010 PV are the _same_ changes the same preset applies in the 2012 PV?

Generally speaking Adobe has been good in the past at making sure that presets are not changed with a new version. However, they have had their share of debacles. I would like to know this as well. Would hate to have to go thru all my photos and retouch them. At the same time though I would like the ability to take specific photos and retouch them to see if I can make any improvements. But this should be optional and not required.

I'm not talking of Adobe LR presets (those that are installed by default and that come along with the LR itself) ... I'm quite sure Adobe has made a good job keeping them coherent with those of LR 3.x . I'm talking about of the huge numbers of largely available (on the net) presets .I'd like to know if they will be converted _CORRECTLY_ with the 2012 PV so that they will work applying the _SAME_ _VISUAL_ changes as they did in LR 3.x . Then I know I'll have larger room to retouch any single photo by the way of the new improvements. But I sitll need the old presets working as usually they did as the steady coherent base for the retouch workflow.